America's Most And Least Religious States

3/28/2012 5:11 AM ET

A survey conducted by Gallup to assess religiosity across the 50 states and the District of Columbia reveals that Mississippi is the most religious U.S. state while Vermont and New Hampshire comes in as the least religious states.

The results were based on telephone interviews, conducted from January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2011, with a random sample of 353,492 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Those who considered religion as an important part of their daily life and attended religious services every week or almost every week were classified as "very religious" by Gallup officials, and 40% of Americans nationwide belong to this category, according to the survey.

Individuals for whom religion is not an important part of their daily life and who seldom or never attend religious services are classified as "nonreligious", and this category accounted for 32% of Americans. The remaining 28% of Americans fall under the category "moderately religious", because they say religion is important but that they do not attend services regularly or because they say religion is not important but still attend services.

According to the findings, the top 10 most religious U.S. states based on the percentage of very religious individuals are:

The Gallup survey also suggests that "the most religious states in the union generally are the most Republican, while the least religious states skew more toward the Democratic Party', an indication that religion is related to politics in America.